The EU missed a momentous opportunity on Syrian refugees

Syrian refugees wait for mattresses, blankets and other supplies, and to be assigned to tents at the Zaatari Syrian refugees camp in Mafraq, near the Syrian border with Jordan.
(AP)

In the name of the fight against smugglers and the preservation of human lives, European Union (EU) countries will not resettle Syrian refugees unless other refugees, Syrian or otherwise, first hire smugglers and risk their lives to reach the Greek islands.

As national and EU authorities know too well, alternative maritime routes, possibly involving the Adriatic Sea or the Black Sea, are also in the making. This is especially true given the militarized fortification of the Greece-Turkey and Bulgaria-Turkey land borders.

As previously noted, it will be fundamental to monitor the legal, humanitarian, and logistical challenges that are embedded in the actual implementation of the agreement with Turkey.

Greece, in particular, will continue to struggle with the needs and demands of the refugees who are already stranded on its soil, and who will continue to land on its islands. These include humanitarian needs, such as a dignified accommodation, but also legal needs. For the agreement excludes collective expulsions. In other words, each new arrival’s asylum case will need to be assessed on an individual basis. For this to materialize, courts will need to be set up and staffed, and refugees will need to be held, most likely against their will, on Greek territory.

Once again, a larger question has been unapologetically ignored by EU leaders: why, precisely, does the global responsibility for refugees need to remain so unequally distributed among Turkey (as well as Lebanon and Jordan) and EU countries?